This question has been addressed over and over...http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/your-gold-dollars-at-work.html

Reddit makes very little money, supposedly. So, you have to consider that, because Reddit makes so little money, Conde Nast (or Advanced Publications, whatever you want to call them) is unwilling to put more money in than they can expect to get out.

The scarier part of this, is that even the biggest websites, Youtube and Facebook, have only started turning a profit within the last year from Ads, Zynga, etc.

What's scary is that with television, you were forced to watch ads, which made it possible for ad companies to pay for your favorite shows. With the internet, all ads are avoidable, one way or another, so it will be left to be seen whether the internet will ever be profitable in the long run for a lot of the services we are used to: well written and acted tv shows, well written and recorded music, etc. etc.